Chronic Mess
by dedelytle
Summary: Contemplating her situation she again tries to blueprint a string of lies together to get her out of her house, her relationship, her job, her hollow life, but she keeps coming up blank. FutureFic


**Chronic Mess**

A/N For Dana

Brittany, twenty days from turning 40, has spent decades creating her life one lie at a time. Using partial truth to manipulate her circumstances into a reality that she could live in, but now she has lied herself into a life that felt like a trap. This morning was like a life insurance commercial, sitting at the kitchen island consuming her drug of choice, strong coffee – light, wearing a lime green wife-beater as her inner dialog was running through the to do list that was a mile long. Knowing that getting on the treadmill will kick start the long day ahead she heads into the parlor and starts her warm up while wrapping her long blonde hair into a messy bun. Once she is cranking at 160 beats she mentally switches gears from her coffee cravings to consider what she could say to avoid having to deal with her partner, her wife, her burden that particular AM.

Santana reaches for her pack on the night table and lights up, taking a small drag to begin her morning wake up routine. She still feels the incisions from having her ovaries removed in a cancer scare last month, once her nic fix has been dealt with she heads into the shower, hoping to catch her partner before work starts. Once Brittany starts working, she does not come up for air until dinner time or later, and Santana has things to discuss with the younger woman. As she enters the bathroom, she notes that her partner is just turning on the shower, giving her time to make herself human, brushing hair and teeth, then moisturizing, which has become more important as she approaches middle age. Speaking over the shower she asks about Brittany's schedule for the day hoping to get some quality time to discuss, but all she gets is silence as her partner steps back under the steamy spray, so she waits for the woman to exit the shower.

Stepping out of the shower she tosses her hair forward and wraps it in a towel to soak up the remaining water, since she never ever uses a blow dryer, this is the best way to dry her long hair. She feels eyes watching her, but not in a burning needy way, it is more of a skin crawly way as if her derma is trying to hide. Looking up into dark eyes, and strong features she makes a comment about work being crazy, with a new project starting that very minute that will require long hours of focus, effectively putting Santana off for a while. Padding over to the closet, she grabs a short robe and heads down the hall to the other side of the house, entering the office she wakes up her screens and logs into the 4 workstations and the laptop she'll be working on today.

Twenty minutes pass, and she is still thankfully alone in the office. Listening sharply she hears the TV playing some DVR'd reality craptasticness, and knows that her partner has gone back to bed, since Santana is the up all night type. Taking a chance she softly walks down the hall towards the stairs to grab more caffeine. As she starts down stairs Santana asks here to bring juice and coffee back upstairs for her when she returns, she replies with a "Yeah. Yeah.", and hustles down stairs before another request from her lazy partner, wife, burden. Flipping the bird to the air, instead of voicing her discontent, she walks into the kitchen.

Once upstairs with bedside beverage service complete, she gathers shorts and a clean tank and heads into the bath to detangle the mess that is her hair. Heading back to the office she tries to concentrate on anything, and nothing, since she actually has a light work load this week, and is using the lie to avoid her life. Brittany stares at the computer screens imagining random pixels as the lies she has told to end up in this trapped life. She tries to consciously ID the first lie she told her partner, but then decides to go back farther to the first ever lie she can recall.

* * *

She was at a party full of other little kids, 4 maybe 5 years old. Her mom drove them to this meet and greet for preschool aged kids and moms. She was sitting on the lower bunk in some kid's room, surrounded by a bunch of cool boys. Boys were cool, because see liked her cousins a lot, and they were boys. She told the kids that she was a boy too so she could play outside, but they didn't believe her because she had on a stupid dress and had long hair. Remembering what happened next made her chuckle to herself, the biggest boy there was named John, she recalls making a fist, without tucking in her thumb in like her cousins taught her, and then she punched him in the gut, and ended up getting her and her mom sent home by John the Tattler's mom. That day pegged her as a trouble maker with all of the other kids moms and made sure that no one ever picked on her at school.

* * *

Brittany stays in the office except for coffee runs until 9pm, hoping to make a light dinner and return to hide in the office for another handful of hours before passing out exhausted. Her plan to avoid her wife who has been topping the charts in the needy department for the past few months has left her with the knowledge that she needs to figure out a way to untrap herself before she is stuck for the rest of her life. She lied her way into this relationship 12 years ago, creating her front so solidly that no one who has seen her in the past 20 years can able to see the holes in the story. Some of the substantial holes she needs to fill in before her parents retire and decide to visit her in her current life, she thinks she needs a polo divot squad. Lies about her father's occupation, and how she met her partner topping the list, followed up by her personal relationships abandoned along the route to her current trap.

After dinner she runs around down stairs doing a few domestic chores, laundry, dishes, floors, ashtrays, plants, pets. Ok so it was not a few chores, she should give herself a huge ass gold star on the fridge. The chore purge is to buy her partner's approval, and reinforce the too exhausted to talk lie later after she exits the office. Passing the master as she drops off dinner for her partner, she has to hang out for a handful of minutes and listen as the dinner is rated as slop, and that it has absolutely no flavor. Internally rolling her eyes because she knows she left off the salt purposefully to make sure Santana did not enjoy her cooking. Dinner duty complete she places the serving tray at the head of the stairs to be taken down on her next trip.

Returning to the office for her late night session, she checks her Facebook, Twitter and Email accounts and sends off a few witty replies to people in her friend lists. Contemplating her situation she again tries to blueprint a string of lies together to get her out of her house, her relationship, her job, her hollow life, but she keeps coming up blank, it is like all of her go to tales are dry and withered like her sex life. Brittany feels her subconscious pulling at her focus like a tourniquet. Yet again she thinks back to the beginnings of her liar-liar ways. Googling her behavior patterns for the first time is eye opening. Confabulation (Definitely), Munchausen (No Need), Pseudologia Fantastica (Her favorite), Pathological (Boring), AntiSocial (zzzzzz), BiPolar (Not), Chronic is the key, but was it triggered? She rolls her eyes at herself.


End file.
